Résumé
Biological invasions, and more specifically those enhanced by anthropogenic activities, are becoming more and more frequent. They in turn have a huge impact on these activities, but also on biodiversity. During biological invasions, we generally observe a decrease in genetic diversity in the introduced populations compared to the native populations. This is basically explained by a reduced number of individuals at the origin of the settlement of the new population. To explain the success of an invasion despite low genetic diversity, one hypothesis proposes a purging of thegenetic load (i.e., a loss of deleterious mutations) in the introduced populations. We are currently testing the purge hypothesis on a large taxonomic scale – around ten invasive insect species from five orders. Using whole-genome pool-sequencing and a reproductible Nextflow pipeline, we are quantifying and comparing the deleterious mutations of native and invasive populations. Here, we will present a first round of results on the evolution of the genetic load in invasive insect populations.